The one word you use in military flying is duty. It's your duty. You have no control over outcome, no control over pick-and-choose. It's duty.

You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can't, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don't give up.

Hey Ridley, that Machometer is acting screwy. It just went off the scale on me.

Everybody that I've ever seen that enjoyed their job was very good at it.

I ran the astronaut school for six years, and I was the commandant and when I finished in '65, 26 of my guys went into space as NASA astronauts that I trained.

If you want to grow old as a pilot, you've got to know when to push it, and when to back off.

The best pilots fly more than the others; that's why they're the best.